Somna
by MortalHeart1430
Summary: Captain Carswell Thorne tells Cress the story of his only true heroic moment. A young, beautiful new girl named Alana enrolls at his school, and Thorne immediately sets to corrupting and wooing her. But what happens she turns out to be someone—something—that Thorne never expected? (I wrote this oneshot for the Winter FF contest and I'm just now getting around to sharing it. Enjoy!)
_**Somna**_

"How long do you think it'll take the Emperor to wake up?" Cress asked tiredly, leaning back in her chair in the rampion's cockpit.

"Considering that he's lying in a military bunk and not a down mattress double the size of this room?" Thorne remarked, shrugging. "Not long at all. Why? Getting bored of my company already?"

"I'm just a little anxious. That's all."

"And why wouldn't you be? We drugged and kidnapped an Emperor from his palace on his wedding day to get him to help a long lost Lunar princess reclaim her throne from the evil witch that currently owns it."

"You're not helping."

"Sorry."

Cress twitched nervously in her chair. "Tell me a story. Something I haven't heard before. Like one of your adventures."

"I thought you said you know everything about me."

"If it's in an official report or your criminal file or anywhere on the net, sure I've read it. Tell me something I don't know yet."

Thorne pursed his lips, deep in thought. Suddenly, his mouth quirked up into a half smile, and the idea had come to him. "Okay. I think I've got one actually."

"One that isn't on the net?"

"If it is, I would have been executed before I even met Cinder."

Cress leaned forward, bouncing excitedly. "What did you do?"

"Let's just say that Cinder isn't the first Lunar fugitive I helped out."

* * *

"Excuse me," Thorne said, leaning up against the brick wall of the school and beaming down at the blonde girl who sat on the ground beneath him. She looked up from the book she held open in her hands, unamused at being interrupted. From his pocket, Thorne pulled a portscreen. "I think this is yours."

The girl rolled her eyes at Thorne. Closing the book roughly, she stood up to face him. "You're right. It is." She snatched the port from his hands. "Which is why I left it in my backpack inside."

Thorne smirked at her unabashedly. "How was I supposed to know it was your bag and not a thief's?"

"You could try just minding your own business." She smiled cynically at him before brushing past him.

Nothing. She hadn't even tried to humor him. Still recovering from a state of pure shock, he jogged to catch up with her. "Hey, you're the new girl, right? I didn't catch your name."

"Because I didn't give it," she remarked. She didn't slow her pace or even stop to look at him.

"My name's Thorne. Carswell Thorne. But everybody calls me Captain. At least, they will soon."

"And yet you probably can't fly anything that isn't remote controlled or AI run. And even then, it's probably iffy territory."

"Ouch. I happen to be a great pilot, thank you. I'm going to run the Republic's military one day."

"Sure you are." She finally stopped and turned to him, completely unfazed. "I'm sorry. Are you surprised that I'm not impressed? Guess girls around here are easily excited about empty words and promises." Thorne's shoulders slumped. His ego was taking some serious blows today. Grinning, the girl finally took pity on him. "Alright, tough guy. Stop pouting. You look like a lost puppy. My name's Alana."

Thorne perked up a bit at this slight victory. "We don't get many new kids around here. Where are you from?"

"The Eastern Commonwealth. My mom and I moved for her job."

"What does she do?"

"Why are you interrogating me?" the girl asked, slightly defensively.

"I just like knowing the girls I stalk," he deadpanned. "Helps me figure out where they go when they're hiding from me."

After a moment in which Alana's face fell to an almost terrified expression, Thorne lost control and burst out laughing. "I'm kidding, kid."

Anger replaced the terror in Alana's eyes. "It's a good thing your looks are better than your intellect. Stars know only one of the two is going to get you anywhere in life."

"Whoa. Let's not be hostile."

"I have a question for you," Alana continued, not seeming to hear him. "Do girls really fall for that stupid 'captain' line?"

"It's not a line," Thorne replied defensively.

"That's exactly what it is. You can talk about doing heroic things until your lungs give out, but until you actually pull yourself together and do something with your life, it's all just words. And you're just another guy trying to impress the girl he doesn't know."

"Wow. For someone who's never met me before, you seem to have me all figured out," he shot back.

"I just meant—"

"That I don't have what it takes? Whatever. Think what you want. I'm going to be there someday. Next year, in fact." Thorne turned to leave, but thought of something else and looked back over his shoulder at Alana. "And by the way, maybe if you weren't so rude to people just trying to get to know you, that book wouldn't be your one and only friend."

With that, Thorne stormed off, absolutely livid at the girl he had only just met. The one who had taken only seconds to get under his skin.

"That's horrible," Cress whispered. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Because I was angry. And hurt. By some girl I didn't really know." Thorne didn't meet Cress's eyes. Instead, he ran his fingers across the dashboard of the Rampion distractedly.

"So… What happened then?"

"I did something I hadn't really ever done before." He glanced up at Cress momentarily, a crooked smile on his face. "I apologized."

* * *

Thorne found Alana sitting on a wooden dock by the lake on the edge of the school's grounds. "Can I sit?" he asked. Only a couple of hours had passed since their earlier conversation, and yet he'd already gone through a range of emotions three times the size of anything he'd felt in the past six months combined. Anger, rage, self-doubt. And then something else in the mix, something eating away at him beneath it all. Guilt. A completely foreign concept for him, to be perfectly honest.

Alana sat with her legs dangling in the empty space between the edge of the dock and the surface of the lake below. Her book lay closed on the dock beside her. She didn't look up when she answered. "Depends. If I say no will you sit anyway?"

Thorne beamed and plopped down beside her. When he settled and finally glanced over to see her reaction, he could see the amused grin she was trying to keep hidden curl the corners of her mouth upward. "I guess you'll take whatever answer's most convenient."

Thorne shrugged. "You can tell me to go any time you want and I'll go."

Alana didn't take his offer. Instead, she asked only: "What do you want?"

"To apologize." She cast her gaze upward at him, a dramatic gasp falling from her lips. "Yeah, yeah," he continued. "I know. A novel concept for me as well so give me a second." He cleared his throat and braced himself, almost as if the thought of apologizing physically pained him. "I, Captain Carswell Thorne, apologize for insinuating that your only friendship was with a bound set of pages. I have since been informed that your relationship with that book is purely a casual acquaintance."

Alana guffawed at him. "That's it? That's your apology?"

"Why? What's wrong with it?"

"This really is the first time you've apologized, isn't it?"

"No. Once, when I was eleven, I tried sell my mother's diamond necklace to get enough money to buy a new port. I had to apologize to get out of being sent to jail."

Alana cackled even louder than before. "So," Thorne ventured. "We're even now, right?"

"Not quite." Alana eyed him appraisingly. And then she raised her right arm and slugged him square in the jaw. Thorne reeled, nearly falling into the water. "Now we are."

Thorne chuckled, pain radiating up his mandible. "That's one wicked right hook you've got there. Maybe _you_ should join the Republic military."

Alana's smile faltered. "No. That's not really my thing. Fighting in wars that aren't mine. That's why I left…"

"The Commonwealth? I didn't know they were at war with anyone."

"They're not," she rushed to explain. "But my father was a soldier back home. He went to fight someone else's battles and we were the ones that had to deal with the loss afterward. He didn't matter to the crown at all."

"I'm sorry."

She pursed her lips and Thorne could have sworn she was holding back tears. "Yeah. Me too."

A silence fell between them, broken only by the sound of the gentle waves lapping at the edges of the lake and the soft wind through the trees on the opposite embankment. Thorne searched for something, anything to say. His fingertips brushed against the book between him and Alana.

"What's it about?" he asked.

Alana looked up, confused until she followed his gaze to the worn cover. She picked it up and held it to her chest. "It's an old second era fairy tale. A little unrealistic. One kiss breaks the princess's curse."

"Yeah, that sounds pretty ridiculous."

"It is," she admitted. "But that doesn't mean it's a bad story."

Their eyes met and they held each other's gazes for a split second before he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Alana dropped the book to the dock beside her so she could raise both hands to his chest. But, instead of pushing him away, she wrapped her fingers in the material of his shirt and pulled him every closer. The kiss seemed to last for hours. When she pulled away, Alana was breathing heavily. A heady dizziness worked its way through Thorne's brain and he had to close his eyes to right himself again. When he opened them, the sight before him made his heart skip a beat.

Alana did not look anything like she had before. Her dull blonde hair was now lustrous gold in the fading sunlight, her eyes glowing so brightly they almost looked phosphorescent. Though Thorne had never seen one in person before, he knew exactly what it was. A glamour. And the only people who could use those were…

Alana, upon noticing his reaction, brought her hand up to touch the unfamiliar skin on her face. "Stars," she whispered.

"You're—" Thorne began. Alana jumped to her feet, abandoning the book on the dock as she moved.

"I don't understand," she muttered, still touching her face in wonder.

Thorne scrambled to his feet after her. "Wait. You're Lunar?"

"No. I mean, I can't be. I was born in the Eastern Commonwealth. I'm Earthen."

"Earthens don't have glamours!"

"Please," she begged. "Promise you won't tell anyone."

* * *

"She didn't know what she was. In some ways she was like all the other Lunars. Smart. Cold and decisive sometimes. But she was scared, too." Thorne kicked at the underside of the dashboard absently.

"Captain?" Cress's soft voice was apprehensive. "What happened to her?"

"It's not important. I don't even know why I chose this story. The time in Marrakesh was far more fun—"

"Thorne," Cress complained. "What happened?"

Thorne sighed and then continued. "There was an old lakefront property that my uncle owned but never went to. I took Alana and her mothers there to keep them hidden. It took a while, but eventually we got the truth out of her adoptive parents. Her mother was a nurse to Princess Winter. Not long after the Princess started to lose her mind, she warned Alana's mother that a 'thorne' was going to ruin her daughter's life. She didn't know what it meant, but she got scared. So, she asked her two closest friends to take her daughter to Earth for safekeeping. And that's where I met her. I was the Thorne that ruined everything."

"Whatever happened, I'm sure it wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was. See, Alana's mother had developed a serum. One dose slipped into Alana's breakfast every morning kept her ability to use her glamour inaccessible. Between that and a little memory alteration by her mothers, she had no way of knowing that she was Lunar. Until I kissed her." He shifted uncomfortably, wanting the story to be over already so that he could forget this darkest time of his life.

"Apparently, the rush of endorphins or whatever while we were kissing neutralized the serum's ability to keep her gift under control."

"But that's not your fault. You didn't know. And you kept her safe afterward."

"Not well enough."

* * *

Thorne sat in his bunk in the soldier barracks. He smiled at the letter in his hands, Alana's familiar handwriting spelling out how proud she was and how she couldn't wait to see him again.

A heavy object hit his arm. He looked down and saw one of his shoes by the bed. In the doorway, his friend Daniel stood grinning. "Get dressed. We're being called in to help with something big."

Thorne beamed and jumped down from his top bunk. "Really? How big? Has war broken out? Are we the last hope of humanity?"

"Better. We've got Lunars."

He stopped short, one boot hanging loosely off his foot. "What?"

"We got an anonymous tip that three of them are hiding out in an old lake house nearby. We're going to pick them up."

Thorne's heart stuck in his throat, depriving him of most of his ability to breathe. "Right." He pulled on his other boot slowly, trying not to attract too much suspicion. "Which ship are we taking?"

"The Rampion, I think—"

Thorne pushed past him before he could finish, jetting down the hall toward the door and then across the yard toward the hangar bay.

* * *

"You stole the Rampion so that you could stall them long enough for her to get out."

"I tried. I don't know if it worked. She didn't answer the Comm I sent her. All I know is that neither she nor her family were there when I got there that night. She might have gotten away, she might not have. Either way, no one ever came after me for harboring a fugitive. Somna never told anyone."

"Somna?"

"Alana's Lunar name. I rarely ever use it. Then again, I rarely talk about her at all."

Cress looked like she was about to say something reassuring when a voice from the cockpit doorway interrupted her. "Where's Cinder?"

A few minutes later, Thorne and Cress had left Cinder and Kai to their reunion. While Cress and Iko made their way to the cockpit, he ducked into the cargo bay and made a beeline for one of the plastic storage containers. Popping the lid open, he shuffled through the fishing lures and dozens of family photos until he found what he was looking for and pulled it out.

The battered cover luckily hadn't deteriorated in the four years it had spent at the bottom of the crate. In fact, to his surprise, the title was still legible. _Sleeping Beauty_. He carefully pulled open the front cover and read the inscription he'd first found when he'd arrived at the lake house that night.

 _You saved my life. Your hero status is certified. I owe you one. Captain is King. –Somna_

"Thorne, you need to see this!" Cress called from down the hall.

"Coming!" He took one last look at the inscription and then returned the book to its place among the other stored memories of a life long since abandoned.


End file.
